cbc Books / January 03, 2019

Phoebe, a young Korean-American woman, secretly blames herself for her mother's death. With this weight on her shoulders, she enrolls at an elite American university and finds herself drawn in by the leader of a secret extremist cult with ties to North Korea. When Phoebe disappears after a terrible bombing, her friend Will becomes obsessed with tracking her down. R.O. Kwon's novel is a look at love and loss in the face of fundamentalism. 

Forbes / December 17, 2018

The Incendiaies by R.O.Kwon follows three Korean-Americans who meet at a prestigious liberal arts college. Will is a shy, formerly devout evangelical.  He falls in love with Phoebe, a party girl with a traumatic past she struggles to repress. They fall under the spell of John Leal, an eccentric, messianic figure who inspires a cult of fervently gullible undergraduates. This is a story about religious fanaticism, the perversion of faith into something more dangerous. All the characters deceive one other about their past and present lives, echoing the malevolent arrogance captured so well by Donna Tartt in her campus novel, The Secret History. Kwon’s style is spare, the narration jumps across time and characters, but this debut novel is a powerful examination of the madness of extremism.  

the atlantic / December 26, 2018

The neat trick of The Incendiaries, a book consumed by the validity and the orthodoxy of religion, is that it sweeps readers so absorbingly into the stories being told that you might forget to question their reliability.

NPR / August 01, 2018

R. O. Kwon's pensive debut novel, The Incendiaries, arrives just in time to stoke up "back-to-school" anxieties, especially those of entering college students and their nervous parents.

May 15, 2019 / -

Author Nicole Chung (left) onstage with executive director of Spark Central Brooke Matson during a Northwest Passages event for Chung at the Bing Crosby Theater on Tuesday, May 14, 2019. Chung’s debut memoir is titled “All You Can Ever Know” and centers on family and growing up in a trans-racial household as an adoptee. 

Buzzfeed / May 22, 2019

Writers Nicole Chung, Andrew Ahn, R.O. Kwon, Don Lee, and Karen Chee reveal their creative processes.

Profil / July 31, 2019

Sie haben alles, was man sich nur wünschen kann: Sie studieren an einer amerikanischen Eliteuniversität, finanzielle Nöte kennen sie nicht. Was wie ein klassischer College-Liebesroman beginnt – zwei Außenseiter finden sich –, entwickelt sich schon bald zur abgründigen Psychostudie über Kids, die in die Fänge eines Sektenführers geraten, der auch vor Anschlägen nicht zurückschreckt. Im Drogenrausch demonstrieren seine Jünger vor einer Abtreibungsklinik, die schließlich in Flammen aufgehen wird.

- / August 01, 2019

R.O. Kwon's scintillating debut novel, The Incendiaries (published last year by Riverhead and now available in paperback), examines the ways that faith can be both a balm and a blight. The book's beating heart is the stormy relationship between Will and Phoebe, two college freshmen who seem to seek solace from their sorrows in one another. It's a bad romance that's by turns mangled and magical; Kwon writes dazzlingly about the bewilderment of desire.

Lancaster / July 30, 2019

 R.O. Kwon’s first book has gotten in the way of her second book. Critics showered Kwon’s debut, “The Incendiaries,” with praise, it made its way onto The New York Times bestseller list, and it was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award for Best First Book.

The Daily Herald / November 03, 2019

Nicole Chung: 7 p.m. Nov. 4, Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way NE, Lake Forest Park. “All You Can Ever Know” is a memoir. Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. But as Chung grew up, facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American, she became ever more curious about where she came from. More at www.thirdplacebooks.com.